Building Trumpet Endurance : One Piece of Advice

What up fellow brass players. In this video, I'm going to share with you that one thing that not only improved my endurance, but also my overall trumpet play. It was advice that I really had to take to heart only after years of struggle and actual pain. So I'm going to share this with you so you don't have to go through that same thing. Stick around for the whole video. Maybe what I did to improve my endurance, it might help you in your journey. So let's get started. The one piece of advice that I really want you to take to heart and take seriously is really something simple. It's to rest as much as you play. So I say this because during my undergrad, all I wanted to do was be the best. By the time I graduated, I was nowhere near the best. But during that time, I practiced as much as I could for as long as I could, but with little to no progress. The reason for that, to be honest, is that my embouchure was completely useless. Because every day I had practice until I was completely exhausted. And then on top of that, I had to perform for ensembles, juries, recitals, lessons. And it got to a point where it was painful to play the trumpet, even during my warm up. Not only that, but I played some pretty embarrassing performances. And I had failing grades for applied lessons just because my embouchure was so beat up that I couldn't play well. Okay, so this is how I actually applied it to my everyday practice. For every exercise or portion of an etude that I practiced, I would take my phone out and I would time myself. Or I would video record every single thing that I played separately. So after all that was recorded, I literally had to get in the habit of taking the horn off my face and resting for that entire time. During that time of rest, I would do two things. I would review the video recordings of myself, taking notes of what went well and what needed more improvement. Then I would ask myself, why did this work or not work? And write down possible conclusions and solutions. Then applying those things to my practice. And two, I listened and watched great trumpet players just play the trumpet. I did this because I wanted to ingrain the sounds that I liked and what it looked like to play the trumpet so effortlessly. I used these sounds and images as a guide to apply in the practice room. So if you're a practice fiend or a practice-aholic like me and you're trying to improve your endurance, just take more breaks to allow your armature to recover and let that blood flow back into your muscles. During your periods of rest, I recommend that you try the two tactics that I used in my practice. Doing this gave me a higher level of awareness, which overall improved my trumpet playing. So if you learned anything from this video at all, just know that you cannot build anything on tired chops. That's it for this video. Hopefully this advice was helpful to you. And when you try it, you'll have more success and more fun playing your instrument. Like this video if you like it. Share it with your friends. And if you made it this far into the video, write down in the comment sections one of the hashtags I used in this video. I'm Aaron, The Black Trumpeter, and I'll see you in the next video. Way to be!